A US, Chinese, and German research team has come up with a new material dubbed "stanene" that could – theoretically, at least – conduct electricity with "100 percent efficiency" at temperatures at which computer chips operate, raising the tantalizing possibility of highly efficient future chippery.
"Stanene could increase the …

COMMENTS

Stanene? Really, stanene? I don't care if it converts oxygen into platinum, I don't want to design anything with stanene in it. Scientists the world over are terrible at marketing, how are they going to license something with a name like that?

"Intel processors, now with 50% more stanene." It sounds like an antiperspirant commercial from the '50's.

But seriously, someone in science really should address the whole marketing thing. So few of scientists present well and it leads to talented researchers not getting their fair share of the credit and inferior research getting pushed to the front of the pack because somebody is pushing it. Plus, stuff like this happens. Stanene. Christ.

Re: Calm down...

Re: Calm down...

Re: Calm down...

Well, how about "Instantene"...? It reflects potential higher speed applications, it contains the "stan-" base and it even ends in "tin" (also, it sounds like something out of a Marvel comic, so rule of cool)...? ;)

Re: No chemists here

Any literate chemist would have called it Stannene, with a double-n to preserve the short "a" sound. With a single-n it should indeed be pronounced "stain-ene" and deserves all the opprobrium of the OP.

Re: No chemists here

Re: No chemists here

Its not a war over pronunciation - the word is spelt differently on either side of the atlantic. IIRC the discoverer of aluminium/aluminum changed his mind on a voyage from Europe to the States. Due to the timescales that information travelled at back then, the aluminium version had stuck fast in GB by the time he got back to this side of the pond.

Re: No chemists here

"We could have a whole new Alooooominum war over the pronunciation"

I think you'll find that the disagreement in that particular case is nothing to do with the long 'o' sound used in the US... it's actually the dropping of the second 'i', when it's common throughout the rest of the periodic table to have 'ium' as a suffix, that irritates people.

In fact, I believe I read somewhere that the correct pronunciation was originally used in the US; the change came about because someone made a spelling mistake in an advert or patent document for a method of processing the metal, and it ended up getting adopted as the normal usage simply because his process was the market leader and most widely known.

It just goes to show that even the smallest cock-up can have far reaching consequences...

Re: No chemists here

@Don Jefe

"Stanene? Really, stanene? I don't care if it converts oxygen into platinum, I don't want to design anything with stanene in it. Scientists the world over are terrible at marketing, how are they going to license something with a name like that?"

And I think that's way humour-by-exaggeration rarely works on the internet without an icon.

Re: @Don Jefe @John Smith 19

Re: @Don Jefe @John Smith 19 @Don Jefe

Sorry Jefe, didn't realise you were joking. I feel kinda bad now...

The trouble with the Internet is that because there are so many frothing-at-the-mouth crazies spouting all kinds of ludicrousness, it has become very difficult for these jaded eyes to spot the difference between exaggerated tongue-in-cheek humour and genuinely 'serious' comments.

Re: @Don Jefe

Re: Scientists the world over are terrible at marketing

Irrelevant - no matter how stuffed with advanced mathematical and computational algorithms, clever quantum mechanics, devious electromagnetic engineering, hi-tech materials science, etc ... that your phone (or whatever) is, they aren't going to use that to market it. They'll just show an attractive person looking happy while using it.

At "best" the marketeers might name it something sciencey - "quantum", "galaxy" - but even then they only used quantum coz it "sounded cool", and it'll be almost certain that the number of galaxies in your phone approaches zero.

Re: pfff

Actually I think you will find that the boiling point of water has not been 100°C for nearly 60 years now. Since 1954 it has been under standard conditions 99.9839 °C, and if you use the ITS-90 calibration it is even less at 99.974 °C. Kids of today eh.

I can attest to the fact that not a single soul in the US could find their own ass on a map

That's a mighty detailed hypothetical map you have there.

I know plenty of people in the US - myself included - who are quite adept at reading maps, and have a decent grasp of world physical and political geography.

I can be as cynical as the next curmudgeon, but this "boo hoo, no one of X nationality possesses Y skill" cliche that Reg commentators are so fond of has gotten rather dull. Let's try harder in the future, eh?

So when do we get a semiconducting version?

This sounds like somewhere along the way to 'super-semiconductors' I invented a few years back. Sadly I am yet to come up with a working prototype - (a bit like Pete 'n' Dud's pill that cures all illness/disease)

Re: Went out with a girl called Stanene

Resistance is futile

The heat in chippery is not due really caused by resistive losses but is more a result of capacitive losses.

Each "bit"/transistor holds charge and is, in effect a small capacitor. Every time a bit state toggles from 1 to 0 or 0 to 1, the capacitor must charge or discharge using up energy according to E=0.5 x C xV^2. Toggling billions of those / sec results in the power consumed by the chip.

Changing the resistance of the conductive paths within the chip has little direct impact on that.

Re: Resistance is futile

If the energy stored in the capacitors could be recycled somehow, instead of being dumped/wasted during a state change, that might be of benefit. It would need a big increase in associated circuitry but it might be worth it for super-high density high speed circuits.

Re: Resistance is futile

"If the energy stored in the capacitors could be recycled somehow."

Well that's a problem... The only way to get charge out of a capacitor is to run it down to 0 volts. Now some of that could be discharged into some other capacitor at a lower voltage, but the rest is going to end up turning into heat.

It is appealing to think that the energy can be "pumped out" and stored in a supercap or such for future use, but then you're really making a perpetual motion machine and there are some laws of physics ready to spoil your fun.

Re: "Look up "reversible computing".

I have looked up "Reversible computing".

Every time I try it I end up thinking it's April 1st.

Meanwhile, if perfect conductors and perfect capacitors existed, computers in general (of the real world non-reversible type) would still be lossy devices where the energy input ended up mostly as heat. Because when you accelerate a charged particle (e.g. an electron) it radiates energy. That energy is, in general, radiated into the surroundings and lost forever. An LC resonant tuned circuit is one of the few exceptions to the general principle that changes in state incur significant losses of energy, and even with an LC tuned circuit, you can't quite get to losslessness.

Re: Resistance is futile

"The heat in chippery is not due really caused by resistive losses but is more a result of capacitive losses."

True enough. If anything, this would *increase* the losses, as the description of the substance shows surface conduction, interior insulation. Break that surface, it's a capacitor. At certain frequencies, it'd be a capacitor even if the surface weren't broken, but that would be true only with large conductors or at the highest of frequencies.

Re: Resistance is futile

@Wzrd1 - a fundamental misunderstanding of CMOS. In a pre-CMOS computer, a bit was represented as a flow of current. It's consuming power even if it's just maintaining an unchanging logic level for minutes on end.

in CMOS a bit of state is a package of charge - maybe as little as 100 electrons. No current flows except when a bit of state is chaged, when the electrons have to be removed from a high voltage (probably representing a 1) to a low voltage (0). CMOS can work on micro- or nano-watts. Witness the hand calculator powered by a couple of square cm of low-grade PV panel, illuminated by an energy-saving dim light bulb (and operated by a dimmer one - sorry). Easy when you want single-digit IPS not MIPS.

Moore's law is based on a scaling law. If you shrink the devices by a given factor, reduce the voltage (between 1 and 0) by the same factor, you have constant power per unit area of chip and that factor squared more devices to play with in the same area. The limiting factor is that atoms are discrete, and today we are at the point where the gates of the FETs can no longer be made much (if any) thinner. So the scaling law can't be followed any further, and the first sign of trouble is that the chip runs too hot because it's suffering resistive heating from various sources.

However Mercury Telluride has been made (I think it was used in IR detectors but better materials exist) and seems to verify the theory, or at least part of it. I'm not sure if that included the 1 atom thick layer thing.

The trouble with these calculated materials is the calcs are complex and approximations used. So the effect works great in a perfect lattice but IRL....

But what happens when you want to tap the flow and direct an electron flow (I know, lets call it a "current") into something more useful?

No mention of what happens at that point.

Thing is if this is a perfect conductor then (by definition) all else is imperfect, so there's a discontinuity interface. "Stuff" happens at such interfaces (typically rectification in semiconductors). Rapid heating as electrons "bunch up"? Infinite impedance IE no electrons exit the material?

B**gered if I know.

And note also 100% efficiency <> infinite capacity. At some point the # of electrons you're injecting into the layer exceeds a threshold and "stuff" happens (again). What's the threshold, what's the effect? See previous comment.

IRL on chip conductor layers have holes punched in them to allow signals (including power) to contact the processing layer from above. IIRC (I'm not current) this is at least 8 layers.

Another "discontinuity"

So I'd call it V 0.05 tech at best. Lots of potential but that's about it at present.

-ene

The '-ene' ending in graphene and buckminsterfullerene has a meaning, by analogy with alkenes. From the Wikipedia article on Fullerenes:

The suffix "-ene" indicates that each C atom is covalently bonded to three others (instead of the maximum of four), a situation that classically would correspond to the existence of bonds involving two pairs of electrons ("double bonds").

Given that this new material has a similar structure to graphene, 'Stanene' seems to be a meaningful name - although I think 'Stannene' would avoid ambiguity in pronunciation and would be more in keeping with Stannic and Stannous.

Re: -ene

"The suffix "-ene" indicates that each C atom is covalently bonded to three others (instead of the maximum of four), a situation that classically would correspond to the existence of bonds involving two pairs of electrons ("double bonds")."

If memory serves, (A-level chem, late 1970s) in compounds containing carbon rings, each C atom has bonds to three others, but the fourth bonding electron is "de-localised." This enables it to move fairly freely over the surface of the rings, so it can conduct electricity. Graphite is the usual example.

Disclaimers: I may have mis-remembered. The picture may have been simplified. Knowledge in the field may have progressed to the point where the above is no longer accurate.

p.s. I don't know if the delightfully-named ring molecule Arsole is conductive, but I don't care.

Re: No, the -ene ending is entirely inappropriate.

Given that there's no carbon and no double-bonds in this entirely inorganic new material, the suffix is completely incorrectly used.

Not exactly. Chemists break those rules all over the place (for lack of syllables? ). -ane refers to a hydrogen-saturated compound of carbon and hydrogen, except we have Silane (SiH4) Borane (BH3 ... sometimes ... lots of other wierd BmHn compounds), and even, if memory serves, Stannane (SnH4). There's the clue: Tin is a group IV element and although it usually displays metallic character, in this -ene it seems to be displaying the same delocalised electron bonding as Graphene.

the thing that's puzzling me is the Fluorine. Two Flourines per Tin should tie up two electrons, so is it maintaining a delocalised ring structure with 2/3 electrons per "bond" rather than 4/3 as in Graphene? Doesn't that make it perfluorostannane? (And can one manufacture perfluorographene, which might make PTFE look sticky if it can exist at all? )

Re: No, the -ene ending is entirely inappropriate.

"(And can one manufacture perfluorographene, which might make PTFE look sticky if it can exist at all? )"

Yes you can. Carbon monofluoride has been known for years, and mre recently graphene fluoride has been made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene_fluoride

Personally even if, and it's a big if, the predicted properties are found to be true I doubt stanene will ever be made, and if it is it will be highly unstable under any useful conditions - it will just disproportionate to elemental tin and either the di or tetra-fluoride. Tin just ain't carbon!

"flourine atoms"

100 percent efficiency?

What exactly do they mean by 100 percent efficiency? If they are seriously claiming to have a room temperature superconductor then the improvement of micro-circuitry will be trivial compared to the other applications.

Room temperature superconductors would be game-changing in all sorts of different fields.

Re: 100 percent efficiency?

My thoughts too initially, but on further reading it would appear that the researchers are not claiming this.

Zhang was at pains to point out:

"This is not a superconductor, with the following distinction -- it only conducts with 100 percent efficiency on the edges -- the interior of this two-dimensional material is an insulator," Zhang told us."

Re: 100 percent efficiency?

Re: 100 percent efficiency?

I expect they mean it superconducts only at isolated edges. Pack a load of edges close together and they simply aren't edges any more. The electrons in one edge start interacting with those in other edges and I'd guess the whole thing becomes an ordinary resistive bulk conductor on the macro-scale.

There's a similar problem in the Semiconductor industry. SiO2 is a good insulator, but only in bulk. As you start trying to make thinner and thinner FET gates, you eventually get to the point where most of your SIO2 is surface and the rest is influenced by being only one bond away from a surface. At which point it ceases to be a good insulator and Moore's law runs out of road.

Another similar conundrum is the tensile strength of a carbon "buckytube" molecule. Strong enough to build a space elevator ... except how do you assemble buckytubes into a bulk material? What "glue" can you use, that doesn't change the (admittedly large) molecule into something else?

Re: 100 percent efficiency?

I was assuming they can't make large structures. Also being 1 atom thick it would need a very smooth special substrate. There is also probably a limit to the current due to electromagnetic, Electrostatic or other effects, so we probably won't see physical wires (which would be like "Litz" no doubt) but if possible at all, only on chips.

Re: 100 percent efficiency?

My initial thoughts exactly, room temperature super conductor would mean maglev tech could really get off the ground... and I can finally finish my intergalactic bridge (well that is just as likely as them actually having a real room temperature superconductor)

Tin pot

I'm not sure I'd trust thin layers of tin to behave themselves - look up "tin whiskers" to find out how it can conduct electricity into places you didn't want.

Although the name should be "stannene" on linguistic grounds, this is already taken for compounds with tin-tin double bonds, so maybe the authors didn't want google searches to fall into chemistry journals. (Graphene was a neologism.) At least they won't have the marketing problems of Element 33, alluded to by Ed_UK above.

So the one that's so big you can peel it off a lump of Graphite with Sellotape was christened Graphene. Until someone did that, it was wrongly assumed that it would be unstable and couldn't exist. (I'd have voted for Sellotapene)

Re: Tin pot

Tin whiskers seem to be an issue when there's enough bulk tin to distort and extrude a whisker. If stanene is made one-atom thick, then it won't have the bulk crystals and grain boundaries that seem to be related to whisker extrusion.

Of course, those conditions would probably appear as soon as stanene gets layered into thicker structures.

Re: Manufacture

At a guess they aren't stable. AFAIK there are NO silicon or germanium analogues of aromatic (C6-ring-based ) hydrocarbons. In fact I don't think there are Silicanes either, apart from Silane. Instead you get silicone chemistry, based on Si-O-Si bonds.

But I may be wrong, because I'd have thought Stanene even less likely. Is it really stable in the presence of Oxygen? Water? Or is it like one of those "things I won't work with" (Google that phrase for some fun reading about molecules that fall apart at the slightest nudge -- or occasionally, against all expectation, that don't).

Re: those HUGE red and blue arrows ...

...did at least make it clear that the upper and lower surfaces weren't counting as edges in this context.

A bit of a shame that, since it probably makes it much harder to produce a macroscopic "wire" carrying an appreciable current, which quite by co-incidence answers the question just below this sub-thread.

Could Stanene be used as a regular electrical-power transmission wire? I realise that the charge can only go along the surface of it, by design. Does this mean that it cannot scale to be useful for passing high voltage current over long distances?

If they can find a way to make lots of Stanene layers or strands all bundles together could that lead to greater surface area and allow for this?

Room temperature superconductivity

Hmm, thats interesting because true RTSC would generate a strong Meissner effect that would be pretty obvious.

I'm curious if this material exists anywhere in quantity to do this fundamental test, if it works then it could be game changing like OP says.

I've played with graphene before in the form of pyrolytic graphite (dislocated graphene) and it certainly does exhibit diamagnetic effects such as floating above a magnet, but this is the strongest effect in a non superconducting material known.

Viagra Ingredient

"Stanene"

Well, it sounds more like an ingredient for an ED medication. Viagra... now with 10% more Stanene. It took all my energy getting my hopes up for graphene... I can't handle another material at the moment.

Funny about tinfoil... should be called Alfoil... but it sounds too much like awful. lol. Do people really still call aluminum foil as tin foil? I remember calling it that decades ago. It's not actually written on packaging anywhere is it?

Stanene?

"Zhang and his team say that they named stanene by combining stannum, the Latin word for tin, and "ene", borrowed from that other much-touted one atom–thick wonder material, graphene. We also suspect that they added "ene" simply because, well, it's the materials science suffix du jour."

Toothpaste??

One of the ingredients of some toothpaste is a Stannous Fluoride. In some localities, it is inserted into water to help prevent cavities. Of course I don't know if this material has similar properties, but you never know!

Watch out for cold weather.

Anyone here ever hear about tin rot? It happens at low temperatures. We could create machines that would work fine in summer, but turn into so many useless paperweights in the winter. The thinner a piece of tin is, the more likely it is to suffer from rot.

Worse, have a look at the tin business nowadays. I'll bet that Tim Worstall could write a very amusing article on the subject.

Re: Watch out for cold weather.

The risk of tin pest would depend on the stability of hexagonal tin. Tin pet is the transformation of ductile metallic tin into brittle diamond-crystalline tin. Where's hexagonal tin sit on that phase diagram?

Of course, the fact that hexagonal tin's not exactly an everyday substance does imply an answer: "It's not stable and will quickly revert to the most convenient allotrope at its current conditions."

But how will you solder to it?

Room temperature superconductivity, of course. It's a new material. 20 years in the materials engineering field has taught me something: all new materials are potentially room temperature superconductors. Their discoverers will tell you so at length.

Really, if a scientist discovers a 7th crystalline form of chocolate, they're going to say, "Hey, this might be a room temperature superconductor!" And CNN and Fox News will 'gasm over the potential of superconducting chocolate (micro) chips.

Tinford university?

What are the properties of this proposed superconductor.

Superconductors have peculiar resistive properties. A conventional superconductor has zero DC resistance, but at elevated frequencies it is observed that resistance is finite and increases more rapidly with frequency than can be attributed to something like skin effect. The resistance increases faster than that of conventional conductors and ultimately reaches a crossover point. Operation above the crossover frequency is degraded with respect to normal conductors. So, the issue is -